4. Sahara (2005)

Sometimes, a movie doesn’t have to be a flop to be a bomb. Take Sahara, the globe-hopping 2005 adventure vehicle starring Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. It opened at number one, made $18 million its first weekend and earned a respectable $119 million at the box office, statistics that would make almost any filmmaker happy.

But in the case of Sahara, it represented box office disaster, since its budget of $241 million was more than twice what the movie took in. Originally intended as the first in a franchise, its failure at the box office made that impossible, a remarkable fate for a number one film that sold over $100 million in tickets.